A visitor sunbathes in Key West, Florida. Photograph © Bruce Dale

South to The Keys
Text by Jim Richardson

A photographer and his son get in touch on a ramble from the Everglades to Key West.

Florida is a strange place to visit if you're a person like me. That's not just because I come from Kansas, though few places are as different from Kansas as Florida. To me, that in itself is a good reason to go—to take a road trip through a strange land, filling the days with encounters unknown back home.

No, Florida is strange to me because most travel there is precooked. All the itineraries are laid out, dictating just what you should do—indeed, must do—so that when you return home you can truly say that you did all the stuff that everyone else who ever went has done.

Florida's like that. A great deal of "must-dos." It's not generally the kind of place for someone who gets his hackles up every time someone tells him he has to go here or do that.

That's how I found myself driving the lonely road through the sawgrass out to Flamingo, on the southern edge of Everglades National Park. My son Tyler and I set out to travel from one end of the road to another, down through the Florida Keys across the Overseas Highway to Key West, as far south in Florida as you can get. For the sake of Tyler, who is a Disney World kid if ever there was one, I hoped our ramblings would keep us away from the more blatant tourist traps, allowing us to find some of the Florida that once was, before tourism took hold.

If you wanted, you could drive this route—from Flamingo in the Everglades down to Key West—in under five hours. But what would be the point?

Instead, I felt it was important to let the spirit of the journey seep into us along with the humid heat of the great swamp. As we drove leisurely along, the great prairie of Kansas receded from our minds, soon replaced by Florida's sawgrass prairie.

Driving across the Everglades, we were hot to see an alligator. So we swung off the main road and rattled down to the Royal Palm Visitors Center, where the Anhinga Trail is famed for wildlife viewing. Here a paved trail leads to a series of boardwalks. Starting down the trail, we came to what I first took to be an alligator display, a realistic-looking model of a nine-foot alligator sitting by the walkway, a replica that I soon realized was watching me, calculating my potential as a quick meal.

Nearby, an anhinga, a diving bird for which the trail is named, alighted on a railing and spread its wings to dry in the fading sun. Farther along the boardwalk we found more alligators, wallowing back in secluded hollows.

There was no way that I could take my son to Florida and not go out on an airboat. Airboats are not allowed inside the national park, but that gave us an excuse to see another part of the Everglades ecosystem.

Our guide, Ray Cramer, is a frogger who comes from a long line of froggers, people who ventured into the Everglades as professional hunters. After a lifetime of hunting, Ray now takes small groups out after dark into the river of grass he knows so well. Goggled and ear protected against the roar of the engine, we headed out. As the sun set, mosquitoes blasted past us, making us acutely aware that one does not yawn in an airboat. Soon all of us had completely lost our sense of direction—except Ray. Cutting the engine and donning a spotlight on his head, Ray began his search.

Almost immediately he started pointing out frogs and alligators, finding wildlife among what appeared to us outsiders as a trackless expanse.

A deer stood frozen in Ray's spotlight three feet from the boat. Large alligators rudely rushed the boat as we invaded their haunts. Ray caught a small one for us to actually hold for a moment.

Every road journey should boast a midway stop like Robbie's Marina in Islamorada. For $3 you can walk down to the end of the dock to marvel at the big tarpon that hang around by the hundred here, and feed them a bucket of fish.

Dolphins are big business in the Keys, so we chose to stop at the Dolphin Research Center on Grassy Key, where we found ourselves chest deep in a pool with Armando "Mandy" Rodriguez and Merina, a 13-year-old dolphin, and her year-old daughter, Pandora. For Tyler, a boy of the Great Plains, this was a rare thrill. Mandy led him through the etiquette of meeting Merina in her watery realm, and then he did something special.

"How old are you Tyler?" he said.

"Twelve," came the answer.

"You'll be a teenager next year. You know, Merina was a terrible teenager."

"She was?" Tyler was clearly intrigued.

"Oh, yeah, she was awful, a real thug. Then she got pregnant and had Pandora. Now she's just a great mother. Totally changed."

Tyler immediately saw Merina and Pandora as real personalities, individuals who'd had problems but had grown up and overcome them.

You can do worse than end your Florida fandango in funky Key West, a quintessential party town. Down on Mallory Square, the town's colorful denizens gather to celebrate every sunset with a sort of free-form carnival.

All residents of Key West are called conchs, and if the margarita wasn't the national drink of the Conch Republic before Jimmy Buffett arrived on the scene, it sure is now. In the Schooner Wharf, the barstools are full of Jimmy Buffett wannabes, and the margaritas come in cactus glasses with no apologies offered.

Duval Street comes alive on Saturday nights as party-loving patrons pour out into the street from bars and restaurants to enjoy the sultry tropical air. As the light goes out in the sky, the street that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico fills up with people bent on having a good time. And nobody seems to miss Mickey Mouse.

The information in this story was accurate at the time it was published, but we suggest you confirm all details before making travel plans.